The Living Agenda (English)
Door: Mike
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Mike&Lisanne
19 Maart 2009 | Pakistan, Islamabad
The Living Agenda
Today we have a clear agenda on our minds. First, we want to assemble our postal package. This means that we have to collect our winter clothes and purchase the souvenirs that we had in mind. Secondly, we want to purchase our traintickets to Karachi, preferrably sleeper. In case this does not succeed we opt for the long busride. But although we had these two simple items on the agenda, the day – again – did not turn out like we would have expected.
The main reasons, though a pleasant reason, being that we agreed to meet with Laiq at his office for some chai. As Henk’s return yesterday very much positively surprised us, we asked Henk to join us for the chai at Laiq’s office. Perhaps Laiq, or one of his servants would a suitable garage to fix his battery/dynamo problem.
At quarter past nine Laiq showed up with his driver at the gate of Jasmine Gardens. He immediately shared a little of his disappointment that we had not meet up after our visit to his house, last Saturday. He literally counted the days for a next rendez-vous.
Being travellers, it’s very hard at a moment in time to really keep in touch with the passing of the days. Days just slip through your fingers like loose particles of sand. Sometimes you remember the sand-castle, but more often than not your memory just makes a plain of sand, like a desert from your collective memory. Here lies the danger. The danger of travelling too long, deminishing the relativity of life. Every day, and experience – how impactfull as it can be – starts to phase out like desert waves, rather than rocky montains..
I remember saying to Lisanne that it was a very, very long time ago since I’ve experienced this kind of loominess. Every day passing by with chatting, reading, a little bit of shopping and eating. Some would call this a life without troubles, others just call this a moment of laziness.
Me, I call this the prelude of comfortably numbness; a states where you cannot distinct one day to the other as you are just gently moving on – not building something, not stretching your senses, not sharing your ‘absolute you’. No, you are sharing your ‘relative you’. Everything becomes explainable from the luxuruous seat you’re in. And you are not tempted to seek new forms of reasoning; but remain with your existing set. In all frankness, you need both perceptions. You cannot forever escape your comfortably numbness, as our brain and reasoning is tailored to think easily and repetitive; like carriage tracks in the mud, you tend to plough over known territory in your thinking..
But personally I believe the key is to understand that you are in fact in that position of deliberate numb thinking and than shift you mind to an active set.
In other words. We had spent enough days at Jasmine Gardens (the Foreign Tourist Campsite) to relax and recouperate ourselves again; it proved to bejust a great haven in our trip. But putting our behaviour and mood into retrospective, it is time to move on and seek new grounds. Being triggered by the unknown. Granted, if you don’t have your moments of complete comfortably numbness, you cannot enjoy stepping out of your comfortzone. You need both. The trick is how to apply this balancing act? Must confess this is a highly pragmatic journey and lesson of understanding oneself and understanding the dynamics of your own personal development.
But in short: we have to move on, and Laiq was our unintended sacrifice to our comfortably numbness. We enjoyed the days passing by without any second thought, whilst other – caring – people were waiting for a sign of life. This unnecessarily caused the first moments with Laiq this morning to be a bit painfull. But as with people that you can ‘click’ with, soon the moods shifting to sharing the friendship and sharing the drives.
The Great enCounter
In this case Laiq had a program in mind. When we arrived at his Post Office I just realized that it was located on Post Office Road. Laiq appeared to be in charge of Islamabad’s, or Pakistan’s largest GPO (General Post Office). We’ve been focusing all our time in sharing our ideas and thoughts, not speaking too much about work. Now it was Laiq’s time to share his daily activities. With great energy and proudness he toured us around the Post Office.
His Post Office embraced a large number of activities under which a Western Union counter, a bank, an Express delivery service (with track-and-trace-possibility!), your average post office counter, allocating the Military’s pension fund and even a brand new video conferencing facility. His tour lasted nearly an hour and he took great effort to clearly explain his servant’s duties and the excellence of his Post Office. It became clear to us, that Laiq was the sort of man that he could do anything that he put his mind to. Great with people and a sharp observer.
After the tour is was time for chai (tea with milk - according to Pakistani customs).
Lisanne, Henk and I had clear objectives this day, but Laiq’s agenda was to further share ideas and talk about thing that are important in life. In itself, very harmless of course. But in the presence of three dutch people it caused some impatient twisting on the chairs. In the Netherlands we typically come to business after the first five minutes of chit-chat, then fix what we have on our minds, finishing with the occassioinal chit-chat. Pakistani-style is different. A lot of informal discussions, talking and drinking chai – and in the meantime we do our business.
Let me give a striking example. After two-and-a-half-hours of no result on our agendas. Henk was suddenly brought to a perfect garage around the corner, Laiq’s team fixed our traintickets and we’re ready to go on our souvenir hunt. On a very sudden moment we had taken our agenda at hand again with very feasible results. It makes you wonder: how efficient would the Pakistani’s be if they just slightly altered their attitude towards effectiveness of time, rather than pleasantness of conversation. I guess again: you need both. But it’s a balancing act that pushes the Pakistani’s to conversation.
In the end of the day, we arranged our train tickets, shipped an exact 16 kilograms of ‘leftovers’ and souvenirs and arranged for dinner at the Kamran restaurant; the same restaurant in Aabpara market where Lisanne and I started our visit to Islamabad. The dinner was fine, and the atmosphere was a mix of new friendship, willingness to help and understand and probably some pre-emptive nostalgia. We felt endowed by the friends that we made in Islamabad. Foreign or domestic by nature we all share the same planet, are able to translate our drives into different contexts and understand each other. Not by merely by focusing on the effectiveness of time, but minimizing our cognitive distance by clear and patient communication; it’s great to be human on this planet; the land is fertile.
Today we have a clear agenda on our minds. First, we want to assemble our postal package. This means that we have to collect our winter clothes and purchase the souvenirs that we had in mind. Secondly, we want to purchase our traintickets to Karachi, preferrably sleeper. In case this does not succeed we opt for the long busride. But although we had these two simple items on the agenda, the day – again – did not turn out like we would have expected.
The main reasons, though a pleasant reason, being that we agreed to meet with Laiq at his office for some chai. As Henk’s return yesterday very much positively surprised us, we asked Henk to join us for the chai at Laiq’s office. Perhaps Laiq, or one of his servants would a suitable garage to fix his battery/dynamo problem.
At quarter past nine Laiq showed up with his driver at the gate of Jasmine Gardens. He immediately shared a little of his disappointment that we had not meet up after our visit to his house, last Saturday. He literally counted the days for a next rendez-vous.
Being travellers, it’s very hard at a moment in time to really keep in touch with the passing of the days. Days just slip through your fingers like loose particles of sand. Sometimes you remember the sand-castle, but more often than not your memory just makes a plain of sand, like a desert from your collective memory. Here lies the danger. The danger of travelling too long, deminishing the relativity of life. Every day, and experience – how impactfull as it can be – starts to phase out like desert waves, rather than rocky montains..
I remember saying to Lisanne that it was a very, very long time ago since I’ve experienced this kind of loominess. Every day passing by with chatting, reading, a little bit of shopping and eating. Some would call this a life without troubles, others just call this a moment of laziness.
Me, I call this the prelude of comfortably numbness; a states where you cannot distinct one day to the other as you are just gently moving on – not building something, not stretching your senses, not sharing your ‘absolute you’. No, you are sharing your ‘relative you’. Everything becomes explainable from the luxuruous seat you’re in. And you are not tempted to seek new forms of reasoning; but remain with your existing set. In all frankness, you need both perceptions. You cannot forever escape your comfortably numbness, as our brain and reasoning is tailored to think easily and repetitive; like carriage tracks in the mud, you tend to plough over known territory in your thinking..
But personally I believe the key is to understand that you are in fact in that position of deliberate numb thinking and than shift you mind to an active set.
In other words. We had spent enough days at Jasmine Gardens (the Foreign Tourist Campsite) to relax and recouperate ourselves again; it proved to bejust a great haven in our trip. But putting our behaviour and mood into retrospective, it is time to move on and seek new grounds. Being triggered by the unknown. Granted, if you don’t have your moments of complete comfortably numbness, you cannot enjoy stepping out of your comfortzone. You need both. The trick is how to apply this balancing act? Must confess this is a highly pragmatic journey and lesson of understanding oneself and understanding the dynamics of your own personal development.
But in short: we have to move on, and Laiq was our unintended sacrifice to our comfortably numbness. We enjoyed the days passing by without any second thought, whilst other – caring – people were waiting for a sign of life. This unnecessarily caused the first moments with Laiq this morning to be a bit painfull. But as with people that you can ‘click’ with, soon the moods shifting to sharing the friendship and sharing the drives.
The Great enCounter
In this case Laiq had a program in mind. When we arrived at his Post Office I just realized that it was located on Post Office Road. Laiq appeared to be in charge of Islamabad’s, or Pakistan’s largest GPO (General Post Office). We’ve been focusing all our time in sharing our ideas and thoughts, not speaking too much about work. Now it was Laiq’s time to share his daily activities. With great energy and proudness he toured us around the Post Office.
His Post Office embraced a large number of activities under which a Western Union counter, a bank, an Express delivery service (with track-and-trace-possibility!), your average post office counter, allocating the Military’s pension fund and even a brand new video conferencing facility. His tour lasted nearly an hour and he took great effort to clearly explain his servant’s duties and the excellence of his Post Office. It became clear to us, that Laiq was the sort of man that he could do anything that he put his mind to. Great with people and a sharp observer.
After the tour is was time for chai (tea with milk - according to Pakistani customs).
Lisanne, Henk and I had clear objectives this day, but Laiq’s agenda was to further share ideas and talk about thing that are important in life. In itself, very harmless of course. But in the presence of three dutch people it caused some impatient twisting on the chairs. In the Netherlands we typically come to business after the first five minutes of chit-chat, then fix what we have on our minds, finishing with the occassioinal chit-chat. Pakistani-style is different. A lot of informal discussions, talking and drinking chai – and in the meantime we do our business.
Let me give a striking example. After two-and-a-half-hours of no result on our agendas. Henk was suddenly brought to a perfect garage around the corner, Laiq’s team fixed our traintickets and we’re ready to go on our souvenir hunt. On a very sudden moment we had taken our agenda at hand again with very feasible results. It makes you wonder: how efficient would the Pakistani’s be if they just slightly altered their attitude towards effectiveness of time, rather than pleasantness of conversation. I guess again: you need both. But it’s a balancing act that pushes the Pakistani’s to conversation.
In the end of the day, we arranged our train tickets, shipped an exact 16 kilograms of ‘leftovers’ and souvenirs and arranged for dinner at the Kamran restaurant; the same restaurant in Aabpara market where Lisanne and I started our visit to Islamabad. The dinner was fine, and the atmosphere was a mix of new friendship, willingness to help and understand and probably some pre-emptive nostalgia. We felt endowed by the friends that we made in Islamabad. Foreign or domestic by nature we all share the same planet, are able to translate our drives into different contexts and understand each other. Not by merely by focusing on the effectiveness of time, but minimizing our cognitive distance by clear and patient communication; it’s great to be human on this planet; the land is fertile.
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
